


Through a Glass, Darkly

by noun



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, F/M, Human Outsider (Dishonored), Rat Plague | The Doom of Pandyssia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25816810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noun/pseuds/noun
Summary: A man on the brink of death receives a mission in Plague-stricken Dunwall.
Relationships: Emily Kaldwin/The Outsider
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	Through a Glass, Darkly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starforged](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starforged/gifts).



> Hi Starforged. This was originally a treat for RarePairExchange 2020, but it took far longer than I expected to clean up as it ended up being a stretch from my normal style.
> 
> TW in these difficult times for mention of a plague and descriptions of general illness, including vomiting.

He sets the offering down on the shabby altar; a pouch of white-leaf tobacco and a few scattered sparrow feathers. He has done his best given his current circumstances. The table has three legs and doesn’t wobble that much, and he washed the cloth in the cleanest water he could find. The stubs of candle are melted together from what he found in the trash, but they’re beeswax, not tallow.

After all that effort, he is prepared to wait. Making an offering isn’t an exact and precise matter of natural philosophy, just the desperate act of a dying young man. The fever started two weeks ago, and the cough a week. He knows the symptoms well; has seen them on half a dozen other street rats like himself, and knows what's coming. The sores over his chest, hidden under his shirt, means he has just a few days left before the fever leaves him blinded and raving. If he wants to do this, he's got to do it know. All he arranges is only based on the scattered gossip he’s picked up over a life in the streets and the things the Oracular Sisters tell everyone _not_ to do. For all the boasting he hears in the alleys of successful visions, he’d bet his remaining life on each and everyone of them being a liar. There’s only a slim chance he’ll even get an answer, but he supposes it's more likely than surviving. He has no hope of affording Elixir, even if he was well enough to pick pockets or tell fortunes to get some coin.

But maybe there’s a particular invocation he should be using-

“Why have you called me?” a woman’s voice says, and the young man jerks his head up. Sitting on the altar is a lady (because what else would that fine outfit make her), and he’s so stunned by the sudden appearance that it takes him a moment to notice her eyes.

Then he knows, and even though he’s nauseous and light-headed from the fever, his stomach twists painfully. He’s done it. Somehow, it worked.

And he is terrified.

“I,” he starts, and she steps down. He scurries back to get out of her way, and falls back onto his ass. The floor in the half-collapsed apartment building is disgusting. He cleaned out a corner of it for the altar, but everything else was rat droppings and dust and things better not thought about, even for a guttersnipe. Yet he feels only smooth wood under his hands, and when he glances behind him, he nearly does start wretching. The floor only extends a few feet behind him, then it drops off entirely into endless blackness. Shapes float, off in the distance, and it hurts his eyes to try and focus on them, so he ignores everything else and jerks his head back to look straight at the figure before him.

“I don’t want to die,” he says. His fingernails scrape against the wood as he curls them tight into fists. He tells the truth, viciously. “ _I don’t want to die_.”

The force of it costs all his precious breath, and he's seized by a coughing fit. She stands silent and watches.

“You have the Plague,” she says, and kneels down before him. Up close, her eyes are just as empty and vast as the Void behind them, but he refuses to look away. “Hundreds sicken across the city each day. Empress Vera herself could not stave it off and threw herself from the Tower to end her own suffering.

“Not,” the Daughter says, and she grins, and she reminds him of some feral thing, seeing all those teeth, “that she did not order all the crows in the city killed before she jumped.”

Mutely, he nods. It was hard to find the feathers he did bring to offer. The Sisters have called for everything that flies to be burned to stop the spread, and the smell is _awful_.

“Why should you be spared? What does your life weigh, for it to be more worthy than the orphan girl who begs in the street? She has family to feed. For now.” Slowly, she rises, and turns her back on him, going back to the altar. She shakes out some of the white leaf tobacco into her palm. “Or the nobleman in his boarded up mansion. He’s dismissed all his servants but for one. The two of them are more equal now than ever before. Will he regret his promise that they could finally be together? What does your life weigh, against any life in the whole of the Empire?”

“I haven’t asked anything of you before. Of any of you. Please,” he says, and his voice cracks, like he was years younger. 

She looks down at him, on the floor, and in her fine clothes and so far above him, she looks like a noble, about to lash out or call for the guard because he dared to look at her. He does not want to think about what horror she could call down upon him here, in her domain. At least it would be a faster death than the one he’s engaged to now.

Very slowly, she says, “What will you give me in exchange?”

He knew this game. Before she’d died, his mother had played the game with him. ‘I have a sweet,’ she’d say, and hold it out in her hand. ‘What will you give me for it?’

‘Anything’, he’d answered. ‘A kiss?’ she’d say. ‘A lock of hair? Your hand at the wrist? Your eye, plucked out? Your beating heart?’

He has nothing worth bargaining now. He never has. The Briar often demands demands sanity alongside devotion, it’s said. The Mother demanded truth. He doesn’t know what the Crow demands now, after the death of his lover. 

“My life,” he says.

Her eyes narrow. Maybe it’s a poor bargain. He’s not really giving her anything she doesn’t already have. There are ecstatic cults to her. Surely they’d do anything with no expectation of reward.

“I accept,” she says, tightening her hand into a fist. The Daughter opens it, and the dust of the crumbled white tobacco leaves rains down on him, stirred by a breeze he can’t feel. He inhales in surprise, and they get into his mouth, his nose, his eyes. It _burns_ , and he scrambles to wipe his eyes, feeling them tear up and then stream down his cheeks. 

The coughing is worse now, blood in his throat, and he feels like he’s choking, gagging. His mouth waters, but whatever drips from his nose into the back of his throat is foul, and he spits, and gags, and wretches, his whole body shuddering. He looks with blurry eyes down at the floor and sees what he's spitting up is viscous and dark. His mother is a decade gone and he longs for her to hold his shoulders and soothe him through this as he vomits and gags and clutches his throat, weeps without noise.

He’s suffocating, she lied, and he’s going to die here, alone and afraid.

For justice, or success, or patience, you burnt offerings to the Heart. Knowledge and inspiration were the Briar’s domain. You swore promises and oaths on the Crow, on what could befall you if you broke them, and begged for aid in all secret matters.

For hope and for mercy, you went to the Daughter.

It abates. He manages one breath, then two. It ends, and his eyes are no longer streaming. It takes a moment for him to come back to himself, to stare at the floor before him, and watch as the last of the foul black liquid is absorbed by the wood. Then it is gone.

His throat is still raw, but when he touches his forehead, it’s not burning. He reaches for the buttons on his worn shirt, intent on checking the sores on his chest, but a hand touches his cheek, and stops him.

She’s still here.

Her face looks softer when her lips frown in concern. She almost looks like the carvings of the Heart that his mother made, benevolent and watchful, but not quite so untouchable. Her hand is cool on his skin. He thinks, unbidden, that this is mercy and she is beautiful and terrible all at once _._ That is justice, too, if not the City Watch's sort, but he'd never depended on them. But if the Heart is actually gone, maybe that's all who is left to balance the scales.

Before he can stop himself, he speaks, though it hurts to get the words out. “Is the Heart truly dead?”

That softness is gone in an instant, and the hand. 

“That’s the wrong question,” she mocks, and dissipates into swirling ash and feathers.

“Who killed her? The Abbey?” he asks, rising to his feet, turning to follow the sound of her voice.

“Why do you want to know?”

“If I make it right, will he stop?” he forges on. He’s gotten away with it before. _He’s not dead_. Every deep breath is a revelation. “Will he stop sending the Plague crows?”

“Father isn’t sending the crows,” her voice says, right behind his ear. “He’s too sad to do much at all. He sits where she was cut down and weeps and doesn’t move at all.”

“And you?” he asks, anticipation burning hotter than the fever ever could. If he turns around, she’ll disappear, and he won’t get his answers. He’s seized with sudden purpose. “Did you send them?”

“I did not. Neither did my aunt. This is entirely a mess of human making.”

His heart skips a beat.

“So the Plague isn’t revenge. It isn’t- you can’t stop it?”

“... no,” she admits, and she seems different. Her tone isn’t half so coy. “I can’t.”

He wonders- but no, he drops it. The question must remain unasked. “Can it be stopped,” he tries.

“Sometimes,” the Daughter admits, very slowly. “Though the chances are slim.”

He takes the risk, and turns. She does not dissipate, or throw him from the Void.

“Please,” he says, and she stares at him. He remembers his mother’s warning, but he's already bargained away his life. “I’ll give you anything.”

Her hand curls around his wrist, and she squeezes. He tries not to scream, because it hurts, but then there is something solid in his hand, and it takes his eyes a moment to focus on it. It’s some sort of strange sword, and the Daughter jerks his wrist, sending the blade sliding back into the hilt. On the bark of his hand, dark against his pale skin, is the image of a bird with wings extended, rendered in short, abstract strokes.

His hand has gone numb from the pain. It occurs to him he will need to cover the mark, if she ever lets him go back to the world. Any Sister would have him burned alive if she saw it on his skin.

“This is the blade with which the Crow should have defended the Heart. Use it to end her murderer, and destroy the knife he used, and I will consider all your debts void.”

She does not let go of his hand or break her stare, and he tries not to shy away.

“That’s-” he starts. “That’s not much to go on. I’ll need more.”

“A name,” she says, and he nods. He tightens his hold on the sword.

"Very well." The Daughter leans in, her lips against his ear, her hair brushing his cheek. She smells of some fine perfume, but he cannot find a word for the scent.

“ _Daud_.”


End file.
